UK airline Flybe caught hiring actors to boost passenger loads

by Grant Martin on

Many Americans don’t realize it, but the Low Cost Carrier (LCC) situation in the UK is downright comical. It seems that every other week or so Ryanair is in the news for some stupid advertising campaign involving boobs, slimeball politicians or both. But competition is pretty tight in the LCC market, so they have to earn their stripes in some way, right?

This week, little known budget carrier flybe was caught attempting to hire actors and actresses to pose as passengers on their flights to fool authorities at Norwich Airport. Why would they do something crazy like this, you ask? Apparently the airline had a deal with the municipality to fly fifteen thousand passengers on the Norwich-Dublin route. If they didn’t hit their numbers by March 31, the airport got to levy a $560,000 fine against the budget carrier

At just a few days out, they were still 172 passengers short, so they started placing ads for free round trip tickets for the weekend, posting ads on actors’ websites and asking their employees to be ready to fly roundtrip over the weekend.

Norwich and the news agencies naturally caught wind and now the airport is pretty sour with flybe. Each party called the other greedy and environmentally unconscious, and now flybe is not invited over for tea this weekend.

Still, you have to admit that it’s a pretty low stunt to pull if you’re not going to make your numbers. Corporate greed, anyone?

That’s a lot of airplane spoons

by Grant Martin on

We all have our strange hobbies. Besides the obvious, mine is buying and selling odd things on Ebay. Catherine’s is ostrich racing. Justin sings opera to mentally disabled children.

And some people steal spoons from airlines and take pictures of them. I am reminded of one of the scenes from the Home Alone series when several of the family members put nice flatware in their bags during their flight.

One guy on Flickr though has done exactly that. He’s either pilfered, been given or traded for over a thousand different airline spoons and has meticulously taken photographs as well as details of every single one and posted them to the web. It didn’t strike me as to how many photos this was until I was leafing through page five of spoons and clicked on page sixty eight. Still going strong.

My favorite thing to do is to look at the spoons with a larger bowl to see the reflection of the photographer or his camera. You can almost see how excited he is to be adding another photo into his collection.

Air France and KLM conglomerate to usurp Alitalia

by Grant Martin on

It appears as if the days of Alitalia are almost over.

Long steeped with financial trouble, Italy’s national airline has slowly been edging down the slippery slope towards bankruptcy. One could blame the quality of their aircraft or the repeated tardiness of their flights or condition of their hub airport, Rome‘s Fiumicino for their slow spiral downward, but the fact of the matter is, they were just a poorly done airline. Most of the time when I fly on a foreign carrier I’m generally pleased by its quality over my domestic carriers — little things that make the airline “European” or pleasant. But on my last flight between Rome and Paris last month I was unimpressed. The equipment was outdated, the service mediocre and the aircraft late.

Perhaps Italians, as well, have lost faith in their maternal airline. As of St. Patrick’s Day, the nation’s government approved their acquisition by Air France/KLM at a paltry 1:160 share ratio, or for about 15¢ a share. It was a desperate, terminal move to save the airline, but may ultimately guarantee their future.

The question that now remains is whether Alitalia will keep its branding and employees or be completely swallowed by Air France. If the acquisition is simple, many travelers may never know the difference between the old and new airline. But if the French decide to refurbish the entire company, there may be some hiccups in service.

Alitalia seeks approval from the new incoming government and the unions before finalizing the deal — expect that to happen in the next few weeks and more news to surface then.

Elliott reads the fine print for you

by Justin Glow on

Does anyone ever read the fine print when purchasing airfare or booking a hotel room? I’ll be honest — I never do. But Christopher Elliott and his band of smart consumers do, and he wrote a quick piece on “5 travel traps lurking in the fine print.” They are,

  1. Caution: our ships may sink
  2. We’re not responsible for your checked luggage
  3. Something stolen from your room? Tough luck
  4. We can take your rental car back anytime we want
  5. We remove your miles and change our program rules whenever we please

Not that any of this will actually get me to read the fine print, but I now peacefully accept that most major companies who require me to sign a contract can rip me off, steal my belongings, and even kill me without an ounce of responsibility. Surprise, surprise. It’s a sad realization in a world of lawyers and people who will do anything and everything to sue.

Head over to Elliott’s blog to read the details.

Experts question biofuel use while Virgin fuels flight with coconut-oil

by Abha Malpani on

I’ve always had an intellectual crush on Richard Branson. He is one of the most fearless high-achievers I can think of today and never fails to surprise. So, when I read that his new idea that involved operating one of Virgin’s Boeing 747’s on jet-fuel (80%) and the oil from 150,000 coconuts was a preliminary success, I was, yet again, bamboozled.

The 40-minute flight from London to Amsterdam demonstrated the successful use of biofuels for the first time on a commercial flight and could possibly lead to a revolution in environmentally friendly aviation.

Many airline companies in association with the CAAFI have been working on using alternative fuels for their planes: synthetic jet-fuel, fuel derived from coal, gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel. Earlier this month a 3-hour test flight by Airbus 380 was successful using GTL, the plane didn’t realize the difference and it was marked as the first step towards developing biofuel (biomass-to-liquid).

Although this would not be used (yet) for commercial flights, Branson’s bold attempt to jump the boat and get straight to experimenting with biofuel has, of course, caused an uproar among environmental groups: using coconut-oil on a large scale has many detrimental effects in the countries it comes from, encourages deforestation, etc.Branson’s next step is to nurture algae — a sustainable next-generation oil — to perhaps achieve the same on a larger scale. This idea, of course, has also been attacked along with mounting evidence that biofuels in fact do not reduce carbon emissions, and that algae may produce more carbon dioxide rather than not.

Initially, alternative fuels that will eventually lead to use of sustainable biofuels was the answer to responsible air and road travel; now, thanks to new evidence, another study on the environmental and economic impact of biofuels has been demanded for.

What’s admirable about Branson is that he doesn’t waste time or banter, he just comes up with a valid solution that no one has thought of, or thought of but not had the guts to give it a try. Everyone else just seems to keep coming up with studies and theories, and studies and theories. And after all these studies and theories(!), why are we going around in pointless circles?